


Goldfish

by Dyson (dysonpoincare)



Category: Dark City (1998)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-21
Updated: 2010-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:37:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dysonpoincare/pseuds/Dyson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A study. A cycle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Goldfish

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kurushi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurushi/gifts).



It did not resist when the dark hand scooped the inert creature up into the cold and black.

A case yawned open nearby, lined with varying devices and tools like specialized teeth, and it was set into the mouth, a perfectly smooth scoop. The fish made its silent pleas for the water, twisting into agonized S-shapes in its protest.

It was bright against the black, shimmering wet gold, when the hand reached to the side, to the teeth, returning with a long probe. The end was delicate with a hooked point. Precise. A thumb securing the writhing fish, it was slid along the opening of the gill flap before stopping, finding something, and slowly, carefully, inserting.

A twist.

The fish went limp. A tiny song of scales clicked in their eloquent symphony, a hymn to the skilled hands that crafted them, as they released their interlock along a tiny seam tracing the delicate fish's round belly. It was automatic: The seam parted away, the plump body merely a disguise, a container of sorts.

A silvery, ribbed pocket shaped the interior of the fish. Tiny rod-like structures threaded from the fins, intricate analogies to living muscle and bone within sheaths of faux-fish flesh. A meticulously built alloy spine trailed along the back of the pocket to the front of the fish. The probe slid under the mechanics of the simple fish head. With a bit of coaxing, glossy eyes shifted on their own. An algorithm flapped its gills, pushed the unfolding hoop of its tiny mouth out in a practice gasp.

The tool ceased the fish’s movements with a simple toggle. It drew away and hovered along the muscle pocket, the twitching seeking eyes. It thought. Debated.

Finally, it withdrew. They would not know any difference. It was functioning as intended.

The fish was closed, lifted, surveyed with a careful eye.

To its bowl, a perfect round bowl, it was placed.

Initially, it lingered at the surface, belly-up. At the fading of their intruding footsteps, it would right itself, and resume its programmed imitation. The occupants would be none the wiser.

 

\---

 

The goldfish existed as an ornament.

No one noticed the simple, clear bowl and its resident on the table. For as long as anyone cared, for as long as their memories served, it had always been there. It was as expected in its presence with the walls, the floors, and the windows.

It was a well-fed fish, as far as whatever was recalled about it went. Most everyone knew how to treat simple goldfish: feed them just enough and they were healthy. Too much and they went belly up. They were pretty to look at it.

The basics of interest when it came to goldfish, for the most part.

At the end of the workday, there had been a disruption in usual business of the subtle, idle movements in the bowl. There were still golden flickers of the bright scales, but the occupant hung at the surface.

A frown, a tap on the glass, a shake of the bowl. The fish’s limp body moved with the water’s disrupted surface. The bowl was picked up. Round, glassy eyes remained locked in place. The fish’s mouth was permanently pushed into an O.

A shame, but the unfortunate, deceased creature was flushed down the toilet, the fate of many pet fish before it. The bowl was set aside, its future use in question.

The goldfish never crossed their mind after that.

Below, the fish’s body flowed at the whims of the twisted bowels of the city, an orange gem among the waste and sludge. It blended it with the trash, the filth, no different from whatever else they above saw fit to be discarded.

All waste went to processing.

Precious water was separated from the refuge. Layers and layers, belts and belts, bounced filtered degrees of refuge along, all of it, to be sorted tirelessly by the white hands.

What was thrown away told them much about their subjects. The finer details of the core of the human soul had been chiseled away by each and every little mannerism. The chips were simply cast away in their wastebins.

With the city’s stench clinging on to it, the dead goldfish, tarnished in its journey, one it had undertaken many times, had been delicately plucked away from its conveyor belt and set aside. Another surveying the catch trays spied the goldfish, whisking it off into the blue shadows of the bowels, to a cold steel table lit bright by a frame of lights.

A tray was there, awaiting the fish’s arrival.

The white hands set the fish down, reaching amidst the different collection of tools, another set of teeth. A thin hose and tiny nozzle gently sprayed it down, as these things were quite fragile, intricately and diligently restoring sheen to every fin and scale. A formerly hidden drain in the center snapped open as needed, esophageal piping warmly sucking the wastes away. Long, pointed tweezers plucked away the more stubborn imperfections. Another hose applied a gentle layer of piscine mucus along the fish’s body.

A long, delicate probe with a tiny hook slid along the opening of the gill flap before stopping, finding something, and slowly, carefully, inserting.

It twisted.

Elegantly the fish opened itself again. Diligently the white hands cleaned with all caution and care for the interior as it had allowed for the exterior before. Meticulously the probe hooked into the head piece, behind and between the wide, blank eyes, and skillfully plucked and twisted.

The goldfish was recalibrated. Its mannerisms, appetites, preferences, tolerances, and lifespan were reset. Precisely, many were engineered to die in the night, before midnight, their death throes to the thrum of the clock shutting the world down. Some were allowed to pass away during waking hours. Many met unfortunate deaths by the experiments’ hands. Some experiments were sensible enough to give their pets proper burials with a flush of the toilet. Some had been recovered off the street. Some fish still remain unaccounted for.

In another part of the city, during another midnight, the goldfish was placed in the fresh rearrangement of a fancy, high-rise apartment, facing the center of the city. It shimmered and indifferently went about its idle golden dance in a larger aquarium with the other fish, skimming along the rocks at the bottom to suck the smaller pebbles up and tumble them back out again.

They were none the wiser.


End file.
